Doctor Lerne

by Maurice Renard, Brian M. Stableford (Translator)

Often hailed as the best French science fiction writer of the early 20th century, Maurice Renard coined the term "Scientific Marvel Fiction" to pen a series of gripping, ground-breaking stories that owe as much to Edgar Allan Poe as they do to H.-G. Wells. Until now, Renard was best known to the English-speaking public for his thrice-filmed thriller, The Hands of Orlac. Dedicated to Wells, Maurice Renard's Doctor Lerne (1908) features a mad scientist who performs organ transplants not only between men and animals, but also with plants, and even machines. It is the first of a series of five volumes, translated and annotated by Brian Stableford, devoted to presenting the classic works of this pioneering giant of French science fiction. This volume also includes "Mr Dupont's Vacation" (1905), a story about dinosaurs returning to life, and Renard's 1909 revolutionary manifesto on "Scientific Marvel Fiction."

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction Fantasy

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1908

About the author

Maurice Renard est un écrivain français né le 28 février 1875 à Châlons-sur-Marne et mort le 18 novembre 1939 à Rochefort.

L'enfance de Maurice est rythmée par des séjours d'été à Hermonville, où ses grands-parents possèdent le château Saint-Rémy (détruit en 1918), et où la famille occupe dans le vaste parc un petit pavillon, le clos Saint-Vincent.
En 1894, il obtient son baccalauréat en lettres et en philosophie. En 1899, il s'installe à Paris et fait des études de droit qu'il abandonne bientôt pour se consacrer à la littérature.Sous le pseudonyme de Vincent Saint-Vincent , il publie son premier recueil de contes Fantômes et fantoches en 1905.
En 1903, il épouse Stéphanie La Batie.quatre Des hôtes illustres fréquentent son salon : Colette, Pierre Benoit, Henry de Montherlant entre autres. Le premier roman de Renard paraît en 1908, Le docteur Lerne, dédié à H.G. Wells, sur le thème du savant fou, suivi par Le voyage immobile en 1909. Il publie Le Péril bleu en 1912, roman remarqué par Louis Pergaud. Il fonde la revue poétique La vie française et publie Monsieur d'Outremort et autres histoires singulières en 1913.
Il participe à la Première Guerre mondiale de 1914 à début 1919 comme officier de cavalerie. Son roman Les Mains d'Orlac paraît en feuilleton en 1920, il sera adapté plusieurs fois au cinéma (Mad Love aux USA en 1935). Publication de L'homme truqué en 1921, d'Un homme chez les microbes en 1928. Maurice Renard divorce en 1930 et se remarie. À partir de 1935, Renard publie de nombreuses nouvelles et des feuilletons dans divers quotidiens et devient vice-président de la Société des gens de lettres.
Il meurt des suites d'une opération chirurgicale à Rochefort en 1939. Il repose à l'île d'Oléron, au cimetière de Dolus d'Oléron où il possédait une petite maison où il vivait le plus souvent.

Reviews

[Warren Fournier · Rating 5 out of 5]

You actually get two great stories and some other lagniappe for the price of one novel here, which is not advertised on the cover.

After the usual scholarly introduction by Brian Stableford, our first encounter is of the dinosaurs-loose-in-modern-times variety. It's a terrific novella called "Monsieur DuPont's Vacation," and if you are a fan of "Jurassic Park," you'll love this! It was inspired by the advancements in natural history where early 20th Century scientists realized they weren't putting together the bones of dinosaurs correctly. Thus, ancient creatures like the Megalosaurus were originally thought to be bear-like quadrupeds, while in actuality, they were bird-like bipedal carnivores. This 1905 novella takes that then new scientific discovery and runs with it, giving us one of the most chilling and gruesome dinosaur encounters ever put to pen, long proceeding Dr. Grant's encounters with T. Rex and raptors. Truly excellent monster mayhem that is very grounded while maintaining an unsettling, dreamlike feel.

The main feature is "Doctor Lerne," originally published in French in 1908. Stableford's 2010 translation is the first unexpurgated English edition. It had previously been translated as "New Bodies for Old" and published in 1923 by Macaulay, but as Stableford says, that version was highly "bowlderized."

There are definitely moments in the book that would scandalize Edwardian Anglican sensibilities, because author Maurice Renard didn't give two shits about convention! Though inspired by "The Island of Dr. Moreau" and dedicated to H.G. Wells, this is edgy French sci-fi to the core.

Now, some of the racy content may have been too much for the early 1900s, but would have been celebrated in the libertine 1960s and 70s. Today, it doesn't "translate" so well. For example, our main character immediately falls in love with a buxom female tenant of his uncle Lerne's creepy castle. They hardly exchange two words before he gets insanely jealous of her for no damn reason, attempts to strangle her, then forces kisses on her. She immediately relents, and then even calls the would-be rapist her "little darling." Yep. Can you imagine telling your grandchildren one day, "Well kids, the day I met your dear grandmother I molested her, and the rest is history!"

To be fair, Renard has a narrative purpose for this scene, which sort of makes more sense in context. Just be prepared for more than a few WTF moments. In fact, this is one of the more outrageous and disconcerting novels I've read in a long time.

But the strength of these stories is in the science fiction, and Maurice Renard has been called the French H.G. Wells for good reason. Renard was the writer responsible for one of my favorite alien invasion novels, "The Blue Peril," which has also been translated and presented by Brian Stableford for this series. This author continues to impress me with "Doctor Lerne." And though based on a much more famous story by Wells, it is not a "rip-off" by any means.

His work really brings to life the scientific mysteries and controversies of his day, and matches technology against age-old philosophical questions, particularly those asked of mind and identity by the Ship of Theseus. There is even a brief tangent in this story comparing the new technology of the automobile to the human body, which is done quite masterfully and which ties so well into the themes of this novel that it really made me stop and think about our current era with shock and awe. And I have concluded that one of the key elements of sci-fi stories that have really landed for me are those that tease out those feelings over the mysteries of nature, of the capabilities of the human mind, and the unknown depths of the universe. "Doctor Lerne" is a fine example.

Even the setting is its own character, designed to inspire goosebumps of wonder, the perfect locale for genre fiction. The plot takes place in the laboratory compound of the titular scientist deep in the ancient growth of the forest of Broceliande in Brittany. Never heard of Broceliande? I bet you have.

"Broceliande! Theater of epic tales and puerile legends, fatherland of the four sons of Aymon and Petit Poucet, the forest of druids and goblins, the wood in which Sleeping Beauty slept while Charlemagne kept watch!"

This book fully encapsulates everything that is great about Black Coat Press and their French Science Fiction series. We've got Brian Stableford's incredibly rich mastery of both French and English languages as well as his passionate attention to the historical importance of these forgotten works in the evolution of genre fiction and his indispensable explanatory footnotes. In addition to the two novels in this story, we've got Renard's rare and intriguing 1909 literary manifesto "Scientific Marvel Fiction and its Effect on The Consciousness of Progress.” We also have extensive biographical information on the author and literary analysis in a foreword and afterword by Stableford. The stories themselves are innovative, ahead of their time, full of mystery, delightfully quirky and bizarre, and sometimes push the boundaries of good taste. We've got monsters and mad scientists, abominations of nature and science, sex and violence, and blood and gore, all of which is designed to entertain while simultaneously stimulating the intellect.

Overall, a fantastic book that I most definitely and highly recommend!

SCORE: 4.5, rounded to 5 Megalosaurs out of 5

WORD OF THE DAY: mahout

[Two Envelopes And A Phone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yeah alright, the ending is like the Thanksgiving turkey getting dropped on the floor as it gets taken out of the oven, and three dogs run over and start gobbling it up. All that prep, and it ends in a bit of a disaster.

But even with that goofball final sequence - I mean, even there, Renard was trying to grapple with a daring concept: human/machine interface. He’s a visionary; he can sense that humanity might one day want to, and be able to, “download” itself into something tougher, durable…immortal? But no, dude, no no…not like that.

Before all that, we have a wonderful, ambitious, brilliant if lovably gonzo, 1908 piece of speculative fiction that would also delight open-minded Horror fans. Renard’s mad scientist will stop at nothing to be Maddest of them all - so I encourage fans of Island of Doctor Moreau, Frankenstein, Deliver Me from Eva, Get Out, and even Christine (though this is where the hounds come in and demolish dinner dropped on the floor) to cluster round and see the show. Parts of animals grafted to plants is just this mad scientist warmin’ up. Imprisoning or murdering anyone who might reveal, and thus cause the shutdown of, the vilest of biological experiments is our mad scientist’s least creative way of problem-solving.

My feeling is that the book is too obvious at hinting at what there is to figure out. But, being right about a lot of stuff early just allowed me to ponder the sheer hideousness of it all for many many pages. “What I’m thinking…it can’t ALL be true?! Can it?”. It is.

I don’t think Doctor Lerne is quite as spectacular as The Blue Peril, but it’s a first novel, if I’ve got things right, and The Blue Peril seemed better at surprises, is better paced and structured, and, for all its outrageous monster scenario taken to the limit, it doesn’t fall splat right at the very end. And like I suggested, Renard was trying to do something creepy and prophetic and thought-provoking as the finale to Lerne…he just can’t sell that particular bit of outrageous plotting as reasonable speculation on the shape of things perhaps to come. It works better, I guess, as Horror - that last section - but still, uh, everything previous is so much more effective and entertainingly pushed through.

As for the only major woman character…hm, not the greatest fictional female creation by a male writer I have ever met in my life. But, this is a very strange book in all ways, and that includes the romantic subplot, the cutting-edge spicy content which, once it is swallowed up by the Horror content, can be called perverse. I love that this whole aspect of the novel exists - but at the same time, it’s definitely disturbing the instant this 1908 novel gets…sexual.

Since Doctor Lerne and The Blue Peril were both so compelling, but also very different in premise, I’m probably going to read everything by the author I can get my hands on. My Doctor Lerne edition also included an early dinosaur-based short story - a fun one - and an essay by Renard where he grappled with what “scientific marvel fiction” was supposed to be, so any little bonuses that creep in with the main novels will be appreciated.

[Steve Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this book - and The Hands of Orlac before it - I'm definitely keen on the idea of reading more by Maurice Renard.

The story, Doctor Lerne, is upper echelon stuff (well, perhaps except for the happenings near the end which translator Brian Stableford rightly labels "manifestly absurd"). It's quite Moreau-like and Renard even dedicates the book to H.G. Wells (additionally, he cites the English author in the text of "Lerne" by referring to "Wells's Martians").

"Lerne" goes farther than "Moreau" in its scientific extrapolation. It must have been considered kind of "R Rated" for the time what with its sexual content and gruesomeness. The novel is full of twists and turns.

Bonus material in this edition:
_M.R.'s "Monsieur Dupont's Vacation" (fiction)
_M.R.'s "Scientific Marvel Fiction and it's Effect on the Consciousness of Progress" (one of the 1st detailed essays on the burgeoning genre in which Wells, once again, is mentioned prominently)
_Mr. Stableford's Intro, Afterword and annotations which are in particularly top form, even for him.

[Stephen Theaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume, the first of five planned to collect the complete scientific marvel fiction of Maurice Renard, includes a story, "Monsieur Dupont's Vacation", a novel which shares the book's title, and an essay, "Scientific Marvel Fiction and its Effect on the Consciousness of Progress".

Monsieur Dupont, a maker of sewing machines and bicycles, receives an invitation from his friend Professor Gambertin to holiday in Les Ormes for a season. Gambertin is an amateur palaeontologist, and caught up in his enthusiasm Dupont spends his holiday digging for dinosaur bones. But what's been nibbling at the bushes?

Doctor Lerne is a Moreauvian figure working to graft parts from one species to another, from animals to plants, from humans to animals. When a nephew comes to visit it interferes with his plans both scientific and romantic, and the outcome can only be tragic.

Renard writes extremely well, and there's a sly wit in evidence throughout. There's Flaubertian mockery of the scientific mindset, and Moliere's delight in flim-flam and doubletalk. But for all that he can be surprisingly brutal to his characters.

As with Brian Stableford's other translations for Black Coat Press there's an exceptionally useful amount of apparatus.

[Jack Stark · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thing I find funny about this is that Renard dedicates this book to HG Wells, stating he was inspired by The Island of Dr Moreau, and practically simping and begging for acceptance, even though he wrote this; arguably a much better story.

"Poor fellow," said Emma. Then after a silence: "Is it not better to be dead than mad? After all it is the best thing for him."

[Ed Erwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 1908 book was inspired by "The Island of Dr. Moreau" and dedicated to Wells. (Other influences are mad scientists created by Andre Couvreur and transplant experiments by Alexis Carrel.) Compared to the Wells book, this contains more horror, as the narrator himself is put through a nasty operation, and not completely sedated.

The key story element is brain transplantation, including between different species; and later hints at transferring the mind withoug surgery.

I read the freely available 1923 translation "New Bodies for Old". It is slightly abridged, apparently removing some references to sex, but otherwise the translation seems good. (I only compared a few sections to the original.)

The writing style is quite good, if perhaps a bit florid. (France, 1908. What else would you expect?)

The references to mythology may go over most people's heads, but it won't spoil the fun.
Most should recognize Circe (who transformed people into pigs), but the fact that the name "Docteur Lerne" refers to the Lernaean Hydra is easy to miss. (The original title translates to "Dr. Lerne, Sub-God".)

The first chapter is a skippable framing story, typical of the time, and the final chapter goes in a silly non-scientific direction. But otherwise, this is a fun read.

Maurice Renard was an early French SF writer inspired, in his own words, by Wells and Poe. He is little-known today, but should be. I want to explore at least a few more of his works which are now available in English, such as The Blue Peril. (I think he writes better than Verne, though I have little experience with either.)

PS: I've always wondered what SF work inspired Bugs Bunny's 1948 "Hot Cross Bunny". This is one possibility, though I have no idea whether the English translation ever became popular.

PPS: A more recent English translation came out recently as Doctor Lerne.

[Marcos (Pacos) Ramos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Muy al estilo de La isla del doctor Moreau. Muy entretenido aunque es muy difícil quitarse la imagen mental de la referencia a la obra ya mencionada

[Juan Antonio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnífica obra de estilo entre la ciencia ficción y el terror. Te impide desde la primera página no poder dejar de leer

[Mark Rabideau · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was unable to complete this due to its overt simplicity (in plot) and disgusting (to me) premise.

[Chini Animalista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Podrían ser 4,5 más bien

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monsieur Dupont's Vacation: In this story, a relatively dull clerk goes to join his wealthy eccentric friend at his chateau in southern France, there being brought into his friend Gambertin's love of paleontology. Together they excavate fossils from a local area that had been buried under ancient lava flows, finding whole dinosaurs of various kinds. Dupont finds the caverns increasingly creepy, though he's unable to fully articulate why. However, as the heat of the summer grows unbearable, the men are forced to leave off their excavations. Shortly after, the leaves begin disappearing from plants on Gambertin's estate, and while his groundskeeper initially suspects locusts, Gambertin and Dupont soon make a more startling discovery. It is, in fact, a baby iguanodon, which has hatched from an egg preserved in ideal conditions within the lava chambers since the second epoch. Gambertin wants to try and capture and study the iguanodon, but Dupont isn't entirely on board. However, on one stormy night, Dupont awakes to find Gambertin trying to lure the iguanodon towards the house--but Dupont realizes that this is not an iguanodon, but a megalosaur, a similar looking creature with the major difference that it's a carnivore rather than the herbivorous igaunodon. The megalosaur devours Gambertin and tries to eat Dupont, but our narrator escapes. The following day, Dupont and the local priest set out to hunt the megalosaur down, only to find that it has already died because the pigs it had been eating overly acidified its digestive tract and it essentially digested itself to death.
https://youtu.be/cmCyysrEDhM

Doctor Lerne: This is a very cool early sci-fi novel, similar in some ways to things like Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau and Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog. The story is told from the perspective of a man--Nicholas Vermont--who goes to stay with his uncle, Doctor Lerne, only to find that his much changed uncle has been conducting experiments where he grafts different plants and animals together, with the ultimate goal being to create something like surgical immortality by transplanting rich old men's brains into younger bodies. What Nicholas learns, however, is that Lerne doesn't just do this on voluntary patients, but uses it as a form of punishment. When Nicholas begins having an affair with Emma, Lerne's ward whom he covets, he learns that Emma's previous lover had his brain switched with that of his dog; then Lerne surgically switches Nicholas' brain with that of a bull, only switching them back when the bull's brain is damaged in Nicholas' body.
Alongside the sci-fi aspects, which are pretty cool in themselves, there's also some interesting ethical elements to the novel. For instance, Nicholas overtly critiques the contemporary science of vivisection--cutting apart a living subject to better study anatomy. And Emma, in a move predating the position of some second wave feminists of the 1970s, explicitly links heterosexual sex to violence.
https://youtu.be/ISPEdiRT0-A

Scientific Marvel Fiction and Its Effect on the Consciousness of Progress: This essay is an early theorization of what would come to be known as science fiction, in which Renard attempts to lay out a core theory of the genre he calls le roman merveilleux-scientifique, or scientific marvel fiction. His core argument is that SMF combines a philosophical approach with scientific knowledge and practices to develop a new art. The core of this combination is an exploration of the terrain of the unknown or uncertain by proposing and working through possibilities that currently do not exist or are not realizable. Through this exploration, SMF creates a profound change in its readers by expanding our horizon of expectations for what could be possible. By hypothesizing beyond the current limits of science, SMF imagines things that can then be explored by genuine science leading to real discoveries that may improve people's lives.
https://youtu.be/5jCC97Lxz9g

[Jess Swann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un roman très étonnant et fantastique, sorte de Frankenstein français se déroulant dans les forêts Ardennaises (en même temps le décor s'y prête). J'ai beaucoup apprécié de suivre le récit à travers les yeux de Nicolas et les références à la littérature du genre, à commencer par Circé qui donne son nom aux expériences du docteur Lerne. J'apprécie également la progression dans les découvertes des expériences et la plume de l'auteur. Le vocabulaire est recherché et les tournures de phrases réellement agréables à lire. J'aime beaucoup le côté jusqu'au boutiste de l'auteur qui va vraiment au bout de son idée et j'ai particulièrement apprécié le passage du taureau.

Ce que j'aime : les expériences et la manière dont le récit est construit, les découvertes de Nicolas, la chute qui même si elle est attendue est bien écrite, la plume de l'auteur

Ce que j'aime moins : le personnage d'Emma que je trouve un peu fade au bout du compte

Pour résumer

Un excellent récit qui va au bout de son idée et nous propose du vrai fantastique

Ma note

7,5/10

[Elenfuin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicolás the principal character feels too much like Victor Frankenstein, an eerie pussiness innate in bouth of them truly makes me hate them.
Another pussy narrator in a mad scientist story...
I´ll continue to wait for a mad scientist to admire.

In respect of the book is truly awesome, the questions that raises about personality and brain, body and soul are just to much fun to let them slip.

The combination of ocultism with the progress in science are a worhty representant of his generation.

[Toño Piñeiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ejemplo de literatura fantastica hecha ciencia ficción. Es hermoso de cabo a rabo, el final, alucinante. El mejor libro que he leido este año, lo recomiendo amplisimamente.

[Anita Mejia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
Divertido y extravagante